US national team sets about developing fully human antibodies targeting the Ebola viruses

Published: 6-Mar-2015

Team plans to isolate antibody genes from patients’ white blood cells, produce the antibodies in cell culture, and test their abilities to stick to Ebola virus proteins and neutralise the virus


A team of US researchers drawn from 10 national institutions is investigating how the blood of Ebola virus disease survivors could be used to help fight Ebola infections in other people. The team is being led by Rafi Ahmed, Director of the Emory Vaccine Center and a Georgia Research Alliance Eminent Scholar, and Aneesh Mehta, Assistant Professor of Medicine at Emory University School of Medicine.

The team includes laboratories from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, Rockefeller University, Aaron Diamond AIDS Research Centre, Vanderbilt University, Scripps Research Institute, Stanford University, and the University of Pennsylvania. Emory has been awarded a grant through the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) for up to US$10.8m over three years, including a base period award of $8m and follow-on option years.

Ahmed’s lab has developed a way to quickly generate large amounts of individual human antibodies. The team plans to isolate antibody genes from patients’ white blood cells, produce the antibodies in cell culture, and test their abilities to stick to Ebola virus proteins and neutralise the virus. The samples will come from blood collected, with patients’ consent, both during their stay at Emory University Hospital and after their discharge.

‘Our goal is to have a panel of fully human monoclonal antibodies with activity against Ebola,’ Ahmed says. ‘Our preliminary data indicates that the immune systems of patients with Ebola virus disease were able to actively produce antibodies.’

An expected outcome of the project is to develop fully human antibodies targeting the Ebola viruses to guide the development of improved therapeutics and vaccines. Researchers plan to find out whether patients’ immune systems produced antibodies that are reactive across more than one Ebola virus strain.

Ahmed’s team also plans to identify T cells responsible for reacting against Ebola virus. T cells kill infected cells and orchestrate the responses of other immune cells. ‘This will allow us to fill a gap in our knowledge,’ says Ahmed. ‘T cells are a critical part of antiviral immune responses, but there is minimal information available about T cell responses to Ebola and about viral proteins targeted by human T cells. This information also will be useful in Ebola vaccine development.’

The collaborators are: Emory University: Centres for Disease Control and Prevention; University of Wisconsin; The Rockefeller University; Aaron Diamond AIDS Research Centre; Vanderbilt University; Stanford University; Scripps Research Institute; University of Pennsylvania; and US Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases.

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